


Unova Valley

by SarbearOkami



Category: Pocket Monsters: Black & White | Pokemon Black and White Versions
Genre: Multi, Stardew Valley AU bc soft and pure, no they don't fuck the shadow brute that's not how these AUs work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-14
Updated: 2017-04-14
Packaged: 2018-10-18 18:56:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10623072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SarbearOkami/pseuds/SarbearOkami
Summary: The newest residents of Nuvema Town are two upstart farmers. They'll quickly find out that the country is truly not as mundane as they're old city life.





	

“Where the fuck is this ladder?” Touya huffed, slamming his pickaxe into yet another boulder. Touko had decided she wanted to do some mining today and oh boy, was he regretting agreeing with her.

Touko wiped her brow and cracked open a rock. “We’ve almost cleared all the rocks on this floor it can't be long now.”

So far they had managed to reactivate one elevator for the day, making a total of eighty floors easily accessible from the surface. Unfortunately these newer floors were starting to heat up rather quickly due to the magma lakes apparently found on these levels. Coming to the end of the day they were getting exhausted, and the heat was not helping them one bit as they slugged rock after rock searching for that infernal ladder that would take them down into the earth a little bit more.

Touya broke another rock, a magma geode bouncing out of its confines. He picked up the egg-shaped object and quickly shoved it into his backpack, cursing as its hot surface singed his fingers. While his bag was open, he fished around in his lunchbox to fish out a fried egg, seemingly not caring about his dirty dust-covered fingers as he shoved the whole thing in his mouth. He zipped up the bag and threw it onto his back. The pack clattered as numerous minerals and gems rustled around inside.

Touko slammed her pickaxe into the final rock of the floor. The pebble shards clacked onto the floor below as the ladder was revealed. “Oh thank god. I was beginning to think we'd have to come back another day.”

“Yeah okay. Can we please hurry up so we can get to Clay’s before he closes?” Touya readjusted his bag, the weight sagging his shoulders uncomfortably. Which wasn't surprising since it was literally a bag of rocks.

Touko threw her bag down the hole before sliding down the ladder. Touya followed suit. They both sighed in relief at the familiar steel door of the mine elevator. The boy dropped his bag on the ground and flipped a couple of switches next to the door. It let out a sharp  _ ding _ and the lightbulb flared, power restored.

“So… that makes eighty-five floors, right?” Touya asked. They both stepped inside the elevator and pressed Floor 0.

The elevator whirred as the two were zoomed back to the surfaces. Touko took the time to dust herself off, mining wasn't really her favourite thing to do but it had to be done. They were running low on ore for the farm’s development.

It was also a dangerous task, often accompanied by frightening encounters with monsters. Just today by entering a new mine environment with the magma lakes, they encountered void spirits that they couldn't shove back and faces that spat fireballs. Touko absentmindedly touched her seared sleeve, remembering that first encounter.

“We're taking the minecarts. I don't want to walk all that way.” Touko stated. Touya simply shrugged.

“What you think I want to?” he replied, “Hell no. I'm exhausted too.”

He checked his watched. They had about half an hour before Clay would close his shop. If they wanted to break open these geodes they would have to hurry it up. As if in response, the elevator dinged and opened its door to reveal the surface floor of the mines.

They dragged the bags to the minecarts with some difficulty. The bags crunched against each other as they unceremoniously dumped the two into the minecarts. Hopping in after, Touko set their course for the town.

~~

“Oi Clay, you better not be closing up just yet!”

Clay sighed as he put down his fresh glass of whiskey. It was four o’clock on the dot, and of course the two newcomers had to barge in last minute for some god forsaken reason. “Yeah whatever kids, get in here.”

The farmers trudged in, dragging their very clearly heavy backpacks with them. Oh boy, he thought, looks like he wasn't going to get his whiskey for a while.

“We found some really good stuff today.” said Touya, smudging his forehead with dust as he wiped it. Clearly not being able to hoist the bag onto the counter, he settled for leaning it against the wooden front. Touko followed him and rifled through her own bag, pulling out miscellaneous geodes.

They both tossed their armfuls of geodes onto Clay’s counter. He grimaced, then sighed again, and slipped on his smith’s apron. “Alright kiddos, you know the deal. 25p per geode.”

Touko forked over a small mountain of pokedollars. Wherever that purse was hiding, it was clearly not in the bag. Clay swept the money off the table and into his till. He didn't bother to count it. And with that he started cracking away at their geodes.

“Magma geodes huh? You guys are getting pretty deep aren't ya?” He split open the dark red stone to reveal a purple ore. “And iridium too? Luck’s on your side today.”

And so he continued. The farmers had amassed quite a bit of ore and coal, some precious gemstones, some artifacts. Some Clay hadn't seen before. Lenora was definitely going to be happy about that.

“If you're quick you might be able to catch Lenora before she locks up the museum. Lighten up your load a little.”

Touya nodded as he placed the various artifacts back into his bag. Obviously he wasn't going to drag this heavy thing home.

They did, in fact, catch Lenora right as she was locking up the door of the museum. Of course, she was ecstatic at the sight of her two top benefactors. She immediately opened the museum again.

“Come, come inside now. What have you got today?” Lenora dumped her handbag on the reception desk and placed her chin in her hands, clearly very excited as the farmers unloaded their bags, along with a lot of dust, right onto the museum floor. “Ooh, you have a lot of new stuff! Oh my, is that alamite? A ruby?  _ A Dwarvish helm? _ ”

Lenora spent a thorough amount of time examining the new specimens they had brought it. It was the same thing every time but somehow they never grew bored of seeing this woman over the moon at new donations.

Once she had calmed down and separated the newest additions from the doubles, she turned back to the farmers. “These are simply wonderful. You guys do such a great job of contributing to this museum. I have something for you.”

She rummaged through her pocket and pulled out a large rusty key. It was clearly old given the style is was wrought in, and was obviously disused from the dark yellow colour. “It doesn't look like much, and I don't really think it is either. But I figured you guys would be able to do more with it than I ever could.”

Touko took the key from Lenora and placed its large loop on her keychain. It contrasted starkly with the house keys. “Okay… what does it open?”

“The sewers dear.”

“... The sewers.” Touya repeated. He had heard that right. The dark, damp sewers that ran beneath the town.

“Yes dear, the sewers. I told you it wasn't much, but come back in the morning and I'll prepare another thank you gift. It's just something I have no use for, and seeing how curious you guys are, you might find something down there?” Lenora shrugged. She knew she was going to make a huge thank-you parcel.

“Right… okay Lenora, we'll be going now.” Touya slung his backpack across his shoulders, thankfully much lighter this time. He and Touko left Lenora to admiring her new artifacts.

“The sewers? Really?” Touya wasn't really expecting reward for donating, but usually said reward was a nice painting or a chair or something, not a key to a place filled with human waste. It was irrational to be bitter about it yet here he was, being bitter about it.

“Oh come on now, where's your  _ sense of adventure _ ?” Touko walked ahead of him slightly as they passed town houses. “Let's go look now, the sun's still up.”

“And what are you expecting to find down there? A full on tango party?”

“Well there might be but you'll never know because you're a chicken.” Touko smirked as Touya visibly frowned at the insult.

“Urgh, fine. We can go swimming around in god knows what if you really want to then.” Touya rolled his eyes.

As if excellent timing, they passed by the town sewer hatch. There was a very distinct smell about it, obviously. But the cement hatch was surprisingly not grimy and disgusting like you would expect it to be. Touko twisted the old key into the padlock on the hatch and it clicked open. She pulled up the door and smell surprised her, almost causing her to drop the hatch.

“Eugh… after you, Touya.” Touko gave a little mock bow and Touya just glared.

“I hate you sometimes.” regardless, he still climbed in and grabbed the also surprisingly clean ladder. Touko followed suit.

As if surprise was the only thing happening today, the smell was surprisingly bearable after a while. Of course, the area was still dark and gloomy, fogged up with a green mist that probably wasn't a pleasant thing. Again, the surfaces of the sewers were gunk-free. If anything, it was just a horribly smelly and misty place.

“Well this certainly isn't what I expected.” Touya commented, his eyes were getting kind of irritated by the mist, but it was easy to ignore.

A scuffle caught their attention, as if Touya had spooked something living in the sewers. The place was pretty large and open, with nowhere to really hide besides the locked gate on the other side.

The source of the scuffling had apparently come from their immediate left, obscured by a corner, and both farmers pulled out their weapons in case this  _ thing _ was hostile. They approached quietly, and the thing remained silent also.

With a large step, they swung around the corner to come face to face with a very… corporeal thing, or person. Touya quickly recognised it as one of the void beings and made to swing his sword when the ‘person’ seemed to cower in fear.

“DON'T! Please don't!” it yelled, the hands covering its head indistinguishable from the rest of its body. The thing seemed to be entirely cloaked in shadow, like it seemed to be more of a living silhouette rather than an actual person.

“Woah, it spoke.” Touya’s sword hand was still hoisted in the air, and Touko smacked his arm down.

“Put your sword down. It doesn't seem hostile.” She let her own fall to the ground as she crouched in front of the thing. “Sorry we scared you. We've had a long day with mean monsters so we were a bit paranoid.”

The thing seemed to distrust her with her sword laying so close still, so she swept it behind her out of reach. Considerably feeling more safe, the thing removed its shadowy hands from its face to reveal two glowing button eyes and a crooked mouth.

“Aww, its kind of cute. Touya look.” Touya did indeed look and decided he would never admit he also found this thing cute. Ever.

“What's your name? I'm Touko.” she gestured to Touya. “And this guy is Touya.”

It seemed to hesitate before giving and answer. “My name is N. I'm a boy, so please stop calling me ‘it’.”

“Well N, do you live down here?” Touko definitely thought the sewers were a pretty sucky place to live, but she didn't want to insult this new stranger. “What do you do down here?”

N perked up and got to his feet. He has a modest pile of assorted objects that he meticulously placed in a line on the sewer floor. “A-Actually I have a shop! Would you like to buy something?”

Among his wares was solar and void essence in neat little piles, bat wings, a black egg with red spots, a star-shaped fruit, and surprisingly, a golden sceptre with a purple crystal mounted in it. The price tag matched its shine, at two million pokedollars.

Taking in the admittedly lacking display, Touko immediately decided the sceptre was out of the question. Solar and void essence was easily come by, as was bat wings. The black egg left her wondering what on earth could've laid it. A cluck behind her answered her question as a very devious looking black feathered chicken sauntered past to peck at N's foot.

“Ah, my friend has returned.” N picked up the chicken. It became nearly indistinguishable against N's own darkness, save for the bright red beak and comb. Touya nudged Touko.

“Hey, Touko. That's a stardrop, you know?” Touko looked over the wares again and realised Touya was right. The star-shaped fruit was indeed one of the legendary stardrops. How on earth did it end up in the sewers?

“Uh, N?” Touko tentatively tried to catch N's attention, having him been preoccupied with stroking the evil chicken’s feathers. He stopped to look at her. “Can I buy this fruit?”

“Oh, uh, yes. That one is twenty thousand pokedollars.”

Touko shouldn't have choked at the price considering how rare the fruits were, but still, twenty thousand? She sighed and pulled out her wallet. One huge chunk out of her wallet later, and she was storing the fruit in her empty lunchbox. N definitely looked happy about it.

“Thank you so much.” N put the gold into a small pouch that leaned against the wall.

“Not to sound intrusive or anything, but what value do you get from human money?” Touya asked. It seemed weird that a monster would have the need for currency that was basically worthless to their own kind.

N blinked and shook his head. “Oh… it's not for me. I want to repay a human that looked after me when I was little. He was very nice to me.”


End file.
